The impact of terrorism on civil servants: Longitudinal evidence from the July 22, 2011 attack in Norway

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Benny Geys,Per Lægreid,Zuzana Murdoch,Jarle Trondal
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13694

RESEARCH ARTICLE

The impact of terrorism on civil servants: Longitudinal

evidence from the July 22, 2011 attack in Norway

Benny Geys

1

| Per Lægreid

2

| Zuzana Murdoch

2

| Jarle Trondal

3,4

1

Department of Economics, BI Norwegian

Business School, Bergen, Norway

2

Department of Government, University of

Bergen, Bergen, Norway

3

Department of Political Science and

Management, University of Agder, Kristiansand,

Norway

4

ARENA Centre for European Studies, University

of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

Correspondence

Benny Geys, Department of Economics, BI

Norwegian Business School, Kong Christian

Frederiks plass 5, 5006 Bergen, Norway.

Email: benny.geys@bi.no

Abstract

Building on a growing literature assessing the societal impact of terrorism, this arti-

cle analyzes whether and how a terror attack targeting public institutions affects

civil servants in their day-to-day work. This is an important question to enhance

our understanding of how terrorism can (or cannot) affect the operation of core

government functions. Theoretically, the study contributes to a broader account of

the political consequences of terrorism by combining insights from social identity

and organization theory. Empirically, we exploit a two-wave survey fielded before

and after the 2011 terror attack in Norway, which allows us to study the same civil

servants (N=186) before and after this event. While terrorists wish to disrupt pub-

lic institutions, our findings indicate that a terror attack targeting core government

institutions strengthens internal cohesion and increases attention to political sig-

nals in work tasks. We discuss implications of these effects for the functioning of

democratic government.

Evidence for Practice

•A terror attack directed against the government apparatus can have important

implications for the civil servants located at the epicenter of the attack.

•Civil servants’sense of belonging to their organization and a tightening of politi-

cal authority are two mechanisms through which terrorism might impact public

governance.

•Political leadership may gain influence over civil servants’decision-making in

the aftermath of an external threat.

•This contraction of public authority can potentially reduce civil servants’atten-

tion to bureaucratic leaders and professional principles in their day-to-day work.

INTRODUCTION

How –if at all –does terrorism targeted at public organi-

zations affect the operation of core government func-

tions? This is an important question from a public

administration and democratic politics perspective since

public organizations and the staff employed within them

play a fundamental role in the governing of modern

societies (Huber, 2000; Orren & Skowronek, 2017;

Putnam, 1973). As such, it is critical to understand

whether and how “acute extra-organizational stressors”

(Byron & Peterson, 2002, p. 895) such as terrorist attacks

on public organizations affect civil servants during the

execution of their work. Building on a growing literature

assessing the societal impact of terrorism (Berrebi &

Klor, 2008; Breton & Eady, 2022; Huddy et al., 2002; Huddy

et al., 2005), this study combines unique individual-level

longitudinal data with a quasi-experimental empirical

approach to address this question.

There is no single definition of terrorism that com-

mands full international approval (Schmid, 2021). Extant

definitions include objective as well as subjective ele-

ments (Shanahan, 2016) and cover legal, moral, and

behavioral perspectives (Ruby, 2002). In this article, we

study the responses of the victims of acts of terrorism,

such that a behavioral-perceptual understanding of

Received: 13 January 2023 Revised: 18 June 2023 Accepted: 20 June 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13694

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1772 Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1772–1784.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar